The AI boom is contributing to jobs bust, as major layoffs continue across the tech sector as firms prioritise investing in AI advancements to maintain a competitive edge.

Layoffs have continued to expound since 2022, which first saw a litany of job cuts following a hiring boom during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According layoffs.fyi, a redundancies tracking website, more than 264,000 people were laid off in 2023, following 165,000 in 2022.

In 2024 so far, 132,900 employees across 410 companies have lost their jobs.

However, this could be an underestimate: a different analysis of over 700 layoff announcements by trueup.io and BestBrokers, estimated that 203,946 tech workers were laid off across over 165 firms since the start of 2024.

According to the data, the US saw the most layoffs in 2024 with 115,257 jobs cut. The UK trialled behind, still with a significant 3,471 jobs cut.

Job cuts in these two countries can be all the more devastating for workers, as foreign workers rely on visas tied to specific jobs to stay in the country.

The report also found that Dell (18,500) Intel (15,000) and Telsa (14,000) accounted for the most jobs cut so far in 2024.

Dells’s major layoffs, which came in two rounds so far this year, are part of a major restructuring effort with AI as a central focus.

Intel’s major cuts also have to do with AI, as the company has so far failed to exploit the benefits of the AI boom as other semiconductor competitors, such as Nvidia, have done.

Tesla’s layoffs, on the other hand, represent the lingering effects of the Covid job boom, as the company cuts down on its rapid expansion following the pandemic.

DIGIT’s last round up of global tech layoffs, which dates back to February 2023, already pointed to AI as a top reason cited by companies to rationalise the major workforce cuts.

Following layoffs of nearly 4,000 employees, IBM chief Arvin Krishna said that the company would pause hiring efforts as it looked into investing more into AI, including testing what jobs AI could perform on its own.

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Microsoft’s layoffs back in 2023 cited economic downturn, but also the emergence of AI, as the company continued to invest in OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT.

Similarly, Google mentioned the company’s early investments in AI when it announced 12,000 job cuts back in early 2023, though both companies did not directly link the two.

However, rumored lay offs found in an internal memo from Google CEO Sundar Pichai back in January 2024 only mentioned the need to restructure to “drive velocity in some areas.” The company’s job cuts in April of this year were similarly murky in their reasoning.

Microsoft, on the other hand, explicitly outlined their focus on AI in a leaked memo released after it cut jobs in its cloud departments.

BestBrokers’ analysis also cited a rise in interest rate as a hurdle for major tech companies to contend with, creating a perfect storm of over hiring, rising costs, and shifting priorities to put even more tech jobs in danger.